This belt gives place in the interior to savannas, pasture lands and forests of useful timber, which latter is cut for export; and beyond are the Cockscomb Mountains, the birthplace of numerous streams. In this interior region of British Honduras there lie the remains of an ancient culture area, ruins of buildings such as we see in Yucatan, the adjacent part of Mexico, and in Guatemala on the west. They appear to show the existence of a larger population in pre-Colombian times--part of that undoubtedly clever and industrious ancient folk of Central America who have so entirely disappeared. To the buccaneers of the Spanish Main the colony largely owes its origin, and to the logwood cutters. The coloured folk here are some of the most expert woodmen in the world, and we see the results of their labour in the rafts of timber--pine, cedar and dyewood--being piloted down the flood of the Belize River. These people are descendants of the buccaneers, people of European blood forming part of the population, the majority of which is composed of a mixture, the descendants of negro slaves, Indian and white settlers. There is, of course, a small purely white class, official, colonial and commercial, under colony government from Britain. The natural products here most in evidence are the timbers, together with bananas and other characteristic fruits, and coconuts, rubber, coffee, cotton and fibre-producing plants; and gold and other minerals are found and worked in small degree. It might perhaps be said that a description of British Honduras is out of place in a book such as the present, treating of Spanish America. But geographical considerations would not thus be denied. Further, this little outpost of the British Empire, if it should always remain such, cannot fail to influence, and to be influenced by, the Spanish American civilization around it. It might under better development accomplish much good in this respect, if the policy of drift were abandoned. A North American traveller who had journeyed across the Central American Republics and had been badgered unceasingly by revolutionary strife there, and by customs-house officers and others of the bureaucracy of those States, once exclaimed that the only peaceful moment of his journey was when he at length entered the confines of a portion of "that hated British monarchy"--British Honduras! This may have been an exaggeration, but held something of truth.